For years, success in B2B marketing was often measured by how many people you could reach. The bigger the audience, the better the result – or so the thinking went. But today, that logic is starting to come apart.
Reaching more people doesn’t necessarily mean making more impact. In fact, many brands are discovering that scale without relevance can be a costly distraction. What really drives results now is resonance, rather than reach.
The growing gap between reach and impact
There’s an increasing disconnect between the size of a B2B audience and the value it delivers. Campaigns can generate lots of impressions, clicks and even engagement, yet fail to influence the people who matter to the business.
That’s because most B2B buying journeys are highly specific. Decision-making groups are small, nuanced and often hard to identify. If your message isn’t speaking directly to those individuals, it doesn’t matter how widely it spreads.
For example, we might segment by ‘procurement professionals in manufacturing’, or ‘senior IT roles in financial services’. What we really need to do is focus deeper on ‘indirect goods procurement managers within electronics’, or ‘cyber security champions within high growth fintechs’.
This is just one area where the ‘relevance gap’ starts to appear. Brands invest heavily in visibility, but not in ensuring their message hits the right people, in the right context, at the right time.
Why relevance is harder but more important than ever
The B2B environment is saturated. Audiences are overwhelmed with content, messaging and competing narratives. Attention is limited, and generic messaging is easy to ignore.
Expectations have also shifted. Rather than just being informed, buyers want to feel understood. They expect supplier brands to reflect their specific challenges, priorities and pressures and come up with valuable help and support.
According to Gartner, brands must demonstrate they fully understand their audiences to get through to them, with content “grounded in buyer needs, not product capabilities.” Demand Gen Report also found that 54% of B2B buyers “are overwhelmed by the amount of content available, but the findings show that quality is far too often lacking.”
So beyond knowing who your real decision-makers are, building all important relevance requires a deeper understanding of:
Without that, even the most visible campaign risks becoming background noise.
Revisiting the earlier examples, you might now be looking at:
Indirect goods procurement managers within electronics – Right now, these leaders are under intense pressure to protect margins while navigating cost volatility and supplier risk, shifting focus from lowest cost to resilience and compliance. They favour structured, evidence-led content, such as benchmarks, case studies, and practical tools, over thought leadership. With limited time and increasing audit scrutiny, they prioritise vendors that demonstrate fast, measurable impact within existing systems. Ultimately, decisions are driven by clear ROI, low-risk pilots, and proof that value can be delivered this quarter, not next year.
Cybersecurity champions within high-growth fintechs – Right now, these individuals are balancing rapid business growth with an increasingly complex threat landscape, where AI-driven attacks and regulatory pressure are both accelerating. They engage with technical, real-world content, such as peer-led insights, threat briefings, and community-driven discussion, while remaining deeply sceptical of vendor-heavy messaging. With lean teams and high expectations, they gravitate towards vendor solutions that reduce noise, integrate seamlessly into developer workflows, and don’t slow innovation. What moves them is clear evidence of threat relevance, fast time-to-value, and proof that security can enable growth rather than hinder it.
The hidden cost of chasing reach
Prioritising reach often leads to diluted messaging. In trying to appeal to a wider audience, brands strip out the specificity that makes communications meaningful. As a result of this, marketing and PR content tends to end up being safe, broad and ultimately, forgettable – even if it wasn’t intended to be!
There’s also an efficiency cost. Budget and effort get spread across audiences that have little influence on revenue. Teams chase metrics that look impressive on paper but don’t translate into business outcomes.
This creates a false sense of success. Campaigns appear to perform, but the pipeline tells a different story.
What audience relevance actually looks like in B2B
Relevance is about focusing your efforts where they can have the most impact. In practice, that means:
Sharpening your audience definition
Building insight-led messaging
Choosing environments that add context
Prioritising influence over volume
When these elements come together, marketing starts to feel like conversations that matter.
Moving from visibility to influence
None of this means reach is irrelevant. Visibility still plays a role in building familiarity and credibility. It just shouldn’t be the primary goal. Instead, it should help guide the path to greater relevance:
Closing the relevance gap
Bridging the gap between reach and relevance requires a change in mindset and the questions we ask ourselves as marketers:
Are we talking to the right people, or just lots of people in the right ballpark?
Does our message reflect real-world challenges, or just marketing industry-defined themes?
Are we driving influence with people, or just generating visibility across the market?
Answering these questions honestly often reveals where effort is being wasted and where it could be refocused for greater effect. Because in a world where attention is scarce and decision-making is complex, the brands that win aren’t the ones that shout the loudest. They’re the ones that matter most to the people who matter.
Thank you to Jackie Perseghetti on Unsplash for the inspiring image!
